It is virtually impossible to get away from marketing. It is EVERYWHERE. Day in day out, hour after hour, someone is trying to sell you something or get you to do something, often interfering with your day.

Yet most of the time we take very little notice of it. Why? Because the majority of marketing sucks!

So how can you tap into that minority that doesn’t suck and get yourself heard?

Why Does Most Marketing Suck?

So much of the marketing we are surrounded by is all about ‘Me, Me, Me!’.

‘We’re the greatest/the best/amazing at this… because we do this.. and we offer this…’

So What?

Loads of businesses spend so much time reeling off every fact that they THINK is interesting about themselves without spelling out the benefits of what that MEANS for the people they work with.

You may be the best at what you do but how does it help the client??

If you’re going to talk about yourself, you need to relate it to the client. No one likes self-indulgence. Your goal is to establish trust with your clients and tell them what’s great about you and your business. Without appearing self-indulgent.

Easier said than done right? Well here are a few pointers to help you on your way.

How to Flip The ‘I’ To ‘You’

Inevitably you will talk about yourself sometimes. There is important information about your business that you need to share with your reader. But with every word you’re writing, you need to be thinking about why that matters to your reader. 

For example, you’ve just won the industry award for Innovation of the Year. That’s great! So how do you tell your reader about it and talk about yourself (where you must) to make it relevant to the reader?

You can ask yourself one simple question: What does this award mean for them?

Then spell out how this award means that you can help more people just like them:

‘The company’s recent win of the Innovation of the Year award highlights how we really are working with customers to find new and fresh ideas for your window coverings.’

Simple as that! You’ve managed to drop that key fact of winning the award in there and turn it straight around to how it benefits the client, rather than wallowing in that self-indulgence.

Features vs Benefits

Along the same lines, lots of marketing mentions features but not benefits. As a business, you may want to list all the products or services that you have on offer. But the reader needs to know how these features will benefit them. So rather than listing the features themselves, list the benefits of the features.

Let’s use that curtain fitters as an example again (I may have been shopping for a few new soft furnishings recently!): ‘‘This drape comes in 3 lengths of fabric: 33mm, 35mm and 37mm.’

Your reader is thinking: so what?

This can be fixed by giving a feature benefit: ‘With 3 fabric lengths to choose from, you’re sure to find the perfect fit for your window with the help of our expert fitters.’ 

Got it? 

Rather than focusing on the fact that you’ve got 3 different fabric lengths, you’ve changed the focus to the benefits these features will give the reader. 

If you’re an expert in your industry, you can probably easily list 10 facts about the product or service you’re selling. But how much of the terminology are your clients going to know? Of how much interest is this to the client?

It’s all very well showing off to other businesses within the industry, but all your clients need to know is how it’s going to help them. In their own little, self-indulgent way!

Find The Pain Points

Find the pain points and relate them straightaway. This is so SO important. You need to know exactly what it is your prospective customers need help with. What are the specific problems they’re facing? And make sure this is the first thing you tackle.

Embrace those hurdles!

Back to the curtain fitters and let’s look at the pain points – maybe a client has very specific specifications for some awkward windows and the usual soft furnishings stores don’t have anything that fits. You must confront that pain point head-on:

‘Struggling to find a solution for those awkwardly shaped windows? We’ve got it covered.’

In an email, you would face this pain point straight on in the subject line and preview text. In a blog, you would confront it in the title, image and excerpt. And on a website/Google Search, it must be included in the meta title and meta description (the snippets of your piece that Google uses to understand what your blog is about).

It’s Not All Bad

The good news about the fact that most marketing sucks is that it’s easy to make simple changes to stand out.

It may be that your blogs/emails/website just need a tweak to turn the focus around from you to the reader. 

Go on! Go and have a read-through now, see how much you’ve waffled on about how great you are, and see how easy it is to turn it around to be about your client.

Remember your content needs to be mostly focused on the reader. If you’re talking about yourself, relate it back to your clients and what it can do for them to build that trust. Simple as that.

For more on simple ways to make your marketing a success, you can check out my previous blog: ‘The Five Foundations of Marketing – Things That Never Change’.

Want to know more? Willing to make the changes but not sure where to start? Book a FREE Discovery Call with me and I’ll help get you on the right track.

Read More Like This…